A gay priest receives the sacrament of acceptance

UTICA, N.Y. -- The folks on Hospitality Row do not mind talking about the fact that the Rev. Fred Daley of St. Francis de Sales Church is openly gay. They know that is why Daley is in the spotlight at a time when some leaders of the Roman Catholic Church are blaming homosexuals for its sexual abuse scandals, and possibly preparing to bar gays from the priesthood.

But they would prefer to talk about Daley's 13 years of service to their impoverished Corn Hill neighborhood, and how he established one sorely needed social service after another: opening refugee housing in the former convent, a shelter for girls from the streets in the former rectory, a soup kitchen in a former crack house across the street from his imposing red brick church, and affordable day care in the former Catholic school.

What counts for Grace Sunday, a refugee from sectarian violence in Sudan whose family is one of four from that country living in the former convent, is that ''everything is just right here. We lived for four months free. We ate from the food pantry. Now I'm working as a teacher's aide" at the day-care center.

In Sudan, Sunday said, ''You'd be isolated if you said you were gay, and stoned to death" for homosexual activity. ''But in the United States, it's normal. I have to go with the present."

Openly gay priests in the Catholic Church are hardly the norm, however. While there are no firm statistics, supporters and critics of gay priests agree there is a substantial number of gay priests in the US, although only two or three are open about it.

''Father Daley is one of very few who have been courageous enough to speak openly about being a celibate gay priest," said Thomas Martin, a priest who is associate editor of the Jesuit publication America.

''In a sense he's a poster priest for this issue. He is a parish priest, he works with the poor, his bishop and parishioners seem to support him, and this is not his one issue."

Daley, 58, says building social-service organizations, establishing alliances with local Protestant and black Muslim groups, and ministering to people of all sexual orientations have always been a part of his ministry. Coming out as a gay priest was a very different matter.

''My whole life, I have felt called to walk with the marginalized and those who are struggling," he said during an interview in his tiny apartment near the church, where the principal decoration is a rendering of the Last Supper that shows women and children at the table with Christ and his disciples. ''Becoming pastor of an inner-city parish was really a fulfillment of my dream. . . . But all of this was done as the good Father Fred, and was not at all connected with my inner struggle and journey."

Daley's struggle to accept himself as a homosexual took from the mid-1970s to the late 1980s, when he began -- ''prudently and carefully" -- to tell those closest to him that he was gay. Along the way, he suffered depression and periods of alcohol abuse, he says, as ''everything in my environment gave me messages that being gay was the worst thing you could possibly be. I wouldn't want anyone to go through what I went through."

''As I became more and more aware of the oppression of gay, lesbian, and transgendered people in general society and especially in the church," he said, ''I became more and more uncomfortable with staying almost totally in the closet. But for years I felt I didn't have an option, that to come out publicly would be the end of my ministry, and I really love being a priest."

Vatican efforts in recent years to search for homosexual tendencies at seminaries, and to discourage homosexual candidates for the priesthood, steadily increased his discomfort, Daley said. ''The breaking point came when, with the sexual abuse scandal breaking, it became obvious that some members of the hierarchy were scapegoating gay priests as the root cause of that strategy."

This finger-pointing represented the culmination of two decades of what Daley called ''cold, unwelcoming, and downright homophobic" pronouncements from the Vatican. ''I know what it is like to be excluded, marginalized, rejected, dismissed, and considered immoral and evil."

Over four days in May 2004, he announced to local media and from his pulpit that he was a gay, celibate priest. By all accounts, most parishioners readily accepted the news. Some were initially shocked or troubled, but they came around to support Daley. Others in the broader Utica Catholic community say that he should not have spoken up, or that gays should not serve as priests.

Bill Privett, 64, retired director of a facility for people with disabilities, and his wife, Marilyn Privett, 54, an employee of the school system, drive past a dozen other churches to be in Daley's congregation. They said they had been taken completely by surprise by his coming out.

''I said to him that of all the things I'd like to be thinking about, this wasn't one of them," said Bill Privett, explaining that the couple was attracted to Daley's ministry because of his outspokenness on peace and justice issues and his activism relieving poverty in the neighborhood. ''I didn't want to engage the issue. I just don't understand sexuality that well . . . Then I decided maybe that's why it's so controversial -- because we don't know about it."

Marilyn Privett also was initially unenthusiastic. ''Oh, great, I thought, let's just tackle one of the less sensitive issues in the Catholic Church," she said. ''I did not think it was wonderful. . . . I don't know whether it's a great thing or not a great thing to have gay priests. . . . I thought about Jesus a lot, and where I come down is people are people, and Fred has been so good about accepting all people for who they are. How could I do less?"

Some more traditional Catholics in the area, including the fire chief, Russell Brooks, 57, are less accepting. Even before Daley came out, Brooks had the priest removed as a speaker at a memorial service for victims of the Sept. 11 terror attacks because of his liberal stands on social issues.

''If he is celibate, I don't object to his being a priest," Brooks said. ''What I'm not comfortable with is that ordained priests are considered icons of Jesus Christ. They administer sacraments and teach the gospel. Why is it necessary for them to talk about their sexuality?

''Words can't describe my admiration for what he does for . . . people without a voice," Brooks said. Still, ''if you don't accept the church's teachings, you may be a very good person, but you are not a good Catholic."

What did Daley hope to accomplish by coming out?

First, he said, ''I did it for my own integrity. I have never experienced more inner peace and spiritual peace in my whole life.

''Beyond that, it is clear to me that Jesus came to serve and minister to all people," he said. ''If we are faithful to that ministry, everyone is welcome around the table of the Lord, without exception."

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com.